1.-5. September 2010: 16th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, The Hague (Netherlands)
From TracingNetworksWiki
Material networks in the ancient Mediterranean and beyond
Session organizer: Katharina Rebay-Salisbury
Networks of contacts between people in the Mediterranean and adjacent regions are central to explanations of artefact distributions, cultural contact and change. Their workings beyond the surface of the archaeological observable, however, remain poorly understood. Seeing, as it is, only the tip of the material iceberg poses questions of the processes involved in knowledge flow and transfer. This session will explore the significance of material objects to the construction, maintenance and collapse of social networks of various forms. Can materials be seen as traces of relationships that once existed, or do they play a formative role to these relationships? How can objects play a role in knowledge transfer, especially of technological knowledge, both spatially and diachronically? In which way do materiality and the material properties of objects play into this discussion?
This session will take a new approach to material networks by integrating the concepts of the chaîne opératoire and Cross-Craft Interaction into interpretations of material networks. The chaîne opératoire considers all technological and social elements of production, distribution and consumption from the procurement of raw materials to the finished item, and extends further into its distribution and subsequent socio-cultural biography. Cross-Craft Interaction can best be understood as the ways in which multiple crafts studied together have a technological and social impact on each other via human interaction. Both concepts allow us to interweave technologies and their social meanings in studying networks of crafts-people in the past.
This session is based on the context of the ‘Tracing Networks’ programme funded by The Leverhulme Trust. Papers will explore, for example, how knowledge is transmitted between craftspeople working on different materials in Bronze Age Greece, how family ties and female relationships are underpinning the distribution of loom weights in Iron Age southern Italy, and how materials are integrated and rejected in colonial situations, such as on Iron Age Sardinia.
Accepted papers
1. Material and Craft Networks in the Prehistory of Asia Minor (Bleda S. Düring)
2. Textile production of the first millennium BC in the Mediterranean (Marie-Louise Nosch, Eva Andersson, Joanne Cutler)
3. Temporality, materiality and women’s networks: the production and manufacture of loom weights in the Greek and indigenous communities of southern Italy (Alessandro Quercia, Lin Foxhall)
4. Interactions between basketry and pottery in Early Iron Age Attica (Lebegyev, Judit)
5. Back to the people behind the pots: the role of human and cross-craft interaction in the development of Protogeometric pottery at the beginning of the Early Iron Age in Greece (Vaessen, Rik)
6. Ceramic Colonial Traditions: ceramic practices and technological sharing in Iron Age Sardinia (Andrea Roppa)
7. Skeuomorphic pottery and consumer feedback processes in the ancient Mediterranean (Justin Walsh)
8. Metalwork exchange networks in Chalcolithic Italy: facts or fictions? (Andrea Dolfini)
9. Tracing networks between the Bronze Age Aegean and the barbarian world: what next? (Anthony Harding)
